History of Magnificent Malagash

There we many thriving French families in the Malagash area.  The French started to settle Malagash in the year 1713.  Many of the French dykes engineered to create fertile farm land by keep water away can still be found in the area.

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For many years the Acadians had been urged to take an oath of allegiance to the British Crown but had always evaded the request or refused.

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Many people believe the Expulsion of the Acadians began at Grand Pre.  However, the very first of the Acadians to be torn from their homes were taken from Tatamagouche to Wallace including the Malagash families.  It was another 3 weeks before Grand Pre was visited, but unlike the later incident when all the people were transported, only the adult males were carried off from these first villages to feel the blow.  No doubt the men hoped to eventually find their way back to homes and loved ones.  

 

|When studying about most incidents in history there is a long line of stepping-stones or signposts leading to the final event. Sometimes people involved cannot see it as it is happening but looking back one can clearly see the movements that led to or precipitated in to the final action. In this case the actions of June, 1755 led to the final removal of the Acadian families in northern Nova Scotia.

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Such a signpost took place on June 17, 1755, the day that Fort Beauséjour surrendered to a British military expedition. It was from then on the days of the Acadian presence in Nova Scotia were numbered.

 

Supported by Massachusetts Governor, William Shirley and by the presence in Halifax of British Admirals, Edward Boscawen and Savage Mostyn, the Nova Scotia Council ordered a last meeting with the Acadian delegates.

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On July 28, 1755, close to a hundred Acadian delegates appeared before the council, and when asked again to swear an unconditional oath of allegiance to the British Crown, they refused and were all imprisoned.

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Now with the unanimous support of the council and with a ruling issued by Nova Scotia Chief Justice Jonathan Belcher, Lieutenant Governor Charles Lawrence ordered the expulsion of the Acadians and the seizure of all their properties and belongings, the name of His Majesty King George II of Great Britain.

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The first act in the removal took place in the small community of Remsheg, now called Wallace, the community next to Malagash.

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On August 15th 1755, 40 British and New England militia soldiers proceeded to Remsheg from Tatamagouche where they had arrived the previous day. They were divided into two groups, ene of 20 soldiers using canoes to go along the coast to Remsheg and the second going on foot to meet up with the canoes at Remsheg.

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A few days earlier, a contingent of 200 soldiers had left from Fort Cumberland near Amherst. One group of about 100 men, led by a Lt. Lewis, proceeded east along the Northumberland Strait towards Tatamagouche. A second group led by a Capt. Abijah Willard also left Fort Cumberland and headed southeast to the settlement of Cobiquid, which is now called Truro. The two groups met on the trail between Tatamagouche and Cobiquid where they encamped and read their sealed orders.

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Capt. Willard was a captain in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment, Gov. William Shirley's Provincial Regiment. He was a soldier provided by the governor to help with the British in the French -English conflict. 

 

When the officers opened the sealed orders, it had been a surprise to Willard. In his diary, Willard described the order as “something shocking”.  He went on to describe the plan "to burn all the houses that I found on the road”.

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So Willard and Lewis, with their two hundred soldiers went on to Tatamagouche with the mission to capture the resident Acadian people along the North Shore including the families in Malagash  and burn their homes.

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During the next morning, Aug. 15, Willard's diary states, “I sent Captain Lewis with 40men  to a place about 12 miles from this place, called Ramshak.”

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While Lewis was on the mission to Remshak, Captain Willard had the soldiers gather together all the men of Tatamagouche, and had all the buildings and homes searched. Willard then told the Acadian men that they would have to go with him to Fort Cumberland. He also told them he was going to burn their homes and buildings but also told them they could bring their women and children with them or leave them there. The men, still in shock, consulted with each other and decide to leave the women and children in Tatamagouche.

Willard wrote in his diary about the incident “they chose to leave their families which readily granted, for I did not want the trouble of the women and children”.

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So unlike the later incident at Grand Pre when all the people were transported, only the adult males were carried off from these first villages.  No doubt the men hoped to eventually find their way back to homes and loved ones.  The women and children were left behind to fend for themselves, and when in October the British finally sent a ship to gather them up, none were to be found.   Very likely, tidings of the affair had reached their countrymen on St. John’s Island, and these had come to their aid.  As the summer was hardly over, and hard winter at least two months off, it is safe to assume they did not perish.

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On the morning of Aug. 16, Captain Lewis returned from his journey to Remsheg with three captured families, having burned several houses. The story continues in Willard's diary. He stated he told the soldiers to collect all the provisions they could carry and then preceded to burn all the buildings in the village including several vessels in the Harbour loaded with supplies for Louisburg. That afternoon Willard marched his group of soldiers and captives on towards Cobiquid.  Eventually he and his prisoners arrived at Fort Cumberland.

 

Today, little remains to show where these first settlers lived, laboured and died.  Here and there in the woods, along the north shore of the bay, an old cellar is to be found, over which once rested an Acadian home.  On the cleared farmland not a trace of any sort is to be seen in verification of their initial homesteading.  No burial ground can be found, and there would be some of their number die in the thirty-five years or more they spent alongside Baie Remsheg.  It is possible their dead were taken to Tatamagouche for interment in sacred soil at the Chapel there, for we know the Abbe le Loutre, that bitter enemy of the English, had a chapel built at that settlement and came often to visit his flock, at their wilderness parish. No doubt the people from Remsheg went, when conditions permitted, to attend mass as there appears to have been no place of worship in their own hamlet.

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Fable has it that the gold accumulated from the sales of their produce in Louisburg is buried somewhere along the shore.  That could well be as they no doubt expected to be able to return and hid their wealth in safety against that day.  But they never did return, and if they buried their gold, it will probably remain undiscovered forever just where those unhappy souls hid it away.  The dykes alone carry the secret of their hiding place, and they will keep their counsel well.

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And because it was one of the most outstanding though unhappy episodes in the long and colourful history of Nova Scotia and a tragedy beyond compare to those affected, it is perhaps not amiss to draw attention to a little-known fact - it was here at Tatamagouche and Remsheg that the Expulsion of the Acadians began.

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Excerpted from an article by Francis W. Grant in The Oxford Journal of August 25, 1955 and other details summarized from the SaltWire Network article posted August 19, 2015.